Intelligent Audit unlocks insights and efficiencies for global fashion retailer

H&M Hennes & Mauritz UK: Streamlining expense management with SAP Concur

H&M Hennes & Mauritz UK, the UK and Ireland arm of the global fashion retailer, manages store-level spending across hundreds of locations with a 143,000-strong global workforce. With over 1,500 active claimers and just one person responsible for expense management, H&M needed a scalable, automated solution.

The challenge

Store-level petty cash spending, covering everyday items across hundreds of locations, was slow, manual, and difficult to control. Staff waited weeks or months for reimbursements, and finance controllers received spending reports three to four months after the fact, limiting their ability to act on cost data in time.

The solution: SAP Concur Expense and Intelligent Audit

H&M first implemented Concur Expense to digitise and automate expense management. Building on that foundation, the team extended to Intelligent Audit - enabling automated compliance checks, a complete digital audit trail, and near-real-time visibility into store-level spending behaviour.

Key benefits

• Petty cash claims processed in 6 days, including approval and payment, down from over two weeks
• Finance controllers moved from reports delivered 3–4 months post-event to near-real-time oversight
• Expense types reduced from 68 to 57, cutting complexity and improving compliance
• 1,500+ active claimers managed by one person, with capacity to absorb additional workload
• Receipts centralised in the cloud - retrieval that once took up to two weeks now takes minutes
• Accurate reporting on mileage, health and safety, and security delivered faster, saving critical time at financial year-end
• Finance director reports now include petty cash across all stores, broken down by cost centre

Download the full case study

See exactly how H&M built greater control, compliance, and efficiency across its entire UK and Ireland operation using SAP Concur.